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7 sentenced to death in Texas are on Biden’s commutation list. Local advocates say more is needed

President Joe Biden speaks during a Hanukkah reception in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024.
Rod Lamkey
/
AP Photo
President Joe Biden speaks during a Hanukkah reception in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024.

At least seven people sentenced to death in Texas were among the dozens on federal death row who had their sentences commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole by President Joe Biden Monday morning — but a Dallas-based human rights group wants the outgoing president to go a step further.

Biden commuted sentences for 37 of 40 people including Julius Omar Robinson of Tarrant County, a drug dealer sentenced to death in 2002 for two murders and given life without parole for a third. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Robinson had filed several appeals and petitions over the years to get off death row.

But the group Human Rights Dallas said the remaining three sentences should also be commuted.

“By leaving three men on death row, who invariably now stand to be put to death, President Biden perpetuates the preposterous belief that there are indeed certain categories of people who ‘deserve’ and merit execution, and for whom no mercy or compassion can or will be shown,” said Rick Halperin, co-founder of Human Rights Dallas and director of SMU’s Human Rights Education Program.

Biden recently commuted the sentences of 1,500 people and pardoned 39 others for non-violent crimes, making it the biggest single-day act of clemency.

The death row commutations come just weeks before the inauguration of Donald Trump, who in his first term gave the green light to 13 federal executions — the last one happening just days before Biden took office in 2021. That was more than any president had overseen in modern history.

In addition to Robinson, there were six other federal death row inmates sentenced in Texas who had their sentences commuted to life in prison.

Shannon Wayne Agofsky beat another inmate to death in a Beaumont prison, while serving a life sentence.  

Christopher Emory Cramer and Ricky Allen Fackrell killed a fellow inmate in a stabbing in a Beaumont prison. 

Joseph Ebron stabbed a fellow inmate to death in a Beaumont prison. 

Edgar Baltazar Garcia and Mark Isaac Snarr fatally stabbed a fellow inmate and injured two correctional officers in a Beaumont prison.  

The President’s authority to grant clemency is limited to federal offenses and cannot grant clemency on state convictions.

The only people who remain on federal death row are Charleston, South Carolina church shooter Dylann Roof, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers.

But Hadi Jawad, co-founder and president of Human Rights Dallas, said the severity of the crime shouldn’t matter — all 40 inmates on federal death row should receive clemency.

"To grant clemency to a certain group and withhold it from another is on shaky moral and ethical ground,” Jawad said. “We urge President Biden to re-consider this selective granting of clemency and commute the death sentences of the remaining men. It's the right thing to do.”

Copyright 2024 KERA

Priscilla Rice